Bias is a disproportionate weight in favor of or against an idea or thing, usually in a way that is inaccurate, Open-mindedness, Prejudice, or unfair. Biases can be innate or learned. People may develop biases for or against an individual, a group, or a belief.
Etymology
The word appears to derive from
Old Occitan into
Old French biais, "sideways, askance, against the grain". Whence comes
French language biais, "a slant, a slope, an oblique".
It seems to have entered English via the game of bowls, where it referred to balls made with a greater weight on one side. Then, it expanded to the figurative use, "a one-sided tendency of the mind", and, at first especially in law, "undue propensity or prejudice".[ or ballast, used to lower the centre of gravity of a ship to increase stability and to keep the ship from one side.]
Types
Cognitive biases
A cognitive bias is a repeating or basic misstep in thinking, assessing, recollecting, or other cognitive processes.
That is, a pattern of deviation from standards in judgment, whereby inferences may be created unreasonably.
People create their own "subjective
social reality" from their own perceptions,
their view of the world may dictate their behaviour.
Thus, cognitive biases may sometimes lead to perceptual distortion, inaccurate judgment, illogical interpretation, or what is broadly called
irrationality.
[Baron, J. (2007). Thinking and Deciding (4th ed.). New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.][Ariely, D. (2008). Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions. New York, NY: HarperCollins.] However some cognitive biases are taken to be adaptive, and thus may lead to success in the appropriate situation.
[For instance: ] Furthermore, cognitive biases as an example through education may allow faster choice selection when speedier outcomes for a task are more valuable than precision.
Other cognitive biases are a "by-product" of human processing limitations,
coming about because of an absence of appropriate mental mechanisms, or just from human limitations in information processing.
Anchoring
Anchoring is a psychological heuristic that describes the propensity to rely on the first piece of
information encountered when
decision making.
According to this
heuristic, individuals begin with an implicitly suggested reference point (the "anchor") and make adjustments to it to reach their estimate.
[ For example, the initial price offered for a used car sets the standard for the rest of the , so that lower than the initial price seem more reasonable even if they are still higher than what the car is worth.][Edward Teach, " Avoiding Decision Traps ", CFO (1 June 2004). Retrieved 29 May 2007.]
Apophenia
Apophenia, also known as patternicity,
Pareidolia is the visual or auditory form of apophenia. It has been suggested that pareidolia combined with hierophany may have helped ancient societies organize chaos and make the world intelligible.
Attribution bias
An attribution bias can happen when individuals assess or attempt to discover explanations behind their own and others' behaviors.[Heider, F. (1958). "The psychology of interpersonal relations", New York: Wiley, 322 p.][Kelley, H.H. (1967). Attribution theory in social psychology. In D. Levine (Ed.) Nebraska Symposium on Motivation, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press][Nisbett, R.E. & Ross, L. (1980). Human inference: Strategies and shortcomings of social judgment, Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.] When judging others we tend to assume their actions are the result of internal factors such as personality, whereas we tend to assume our own actions arise because of the necessity of external circumstances. There are a wide range of sorts of attribution biases, such as the ultimate attribution error, fundamental attribution error, actor-observer bias, and self-serving bias.
Examples of attribution bias:
Confirmation bias
Confirmation bias is the tendency to Research, Evaluation, favor, and recall information in a way that confirms one's or hypothesis while giving disproportionately less attention to information that contradicts it.[Tuchman, Barbara (1984). The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam. New York: Knopf.]
Framing
Framing involves the social construction of social phenomena by mass media sources, Ideology, Politician, and so on. It is an influence over how people organize, perceive, and communicate about reality.[Goffman, E. (1974). Frame Analysis: An Essay on the Organization of Experience. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.] People use filters to make sense of the world, the choices they then make are influenced by their creation of a frame.
Cultural bias is the related phenomenon of interpreting and judging phenomena by standards inherent to one's own culture. Numerous such biases exist, concerning cultural norms for color, location of body parts, mate selection, concepts of justice, linguistics and validity, acceptability of evidence, and . Ordinary people may tend to imagine other people as basically the same, not significantly more or less valuable, probably attached emotionally to different groups and different land.
Halo effect and horn effect
The halo effect and the horn effect are when an Observation overall impression of a person, organization, brand, or product influences their feelings about specifics of that entity's character or properties.
The name halo effect is based on the concept of the saint's halo, and is a specific type of confirmation bias, wherein positive sentiments in one area cause questionable or unknown characteristics to be seen positively. If the observer likes one aspect of something, they will have a positive predisposition toward everything about it.
The opposite of the halo is the horn effect, when "individuals believe (that negative) traits are inter-connected."
Self-serving bias
Self-serving bias is the tendency for cognition or perception processes to be distorted by the individual's need to maintain and enhance self-esteem.[Myers, D.G. (2015). Exploring Social Psychology, 7th Edition. New York: McGraw Hill Education.] It is the propensity to credit accomplishment to our own capacities and endeavors, yet attribute failure to outside factors,
Status quo bias
Status quo bias is an emotional bias; a preference for the current state of affairs. The current baseline (or status quo) is taken as a reference point, and any change from that baseline is perceived as a loss.
Status quo bias should be distinguished from a rational preference for the status quo ante, as when the current state of affairs is objectively superior to the available alternatives, or when imperfect information is a significant problem. A large body of evidence, however, shows that status quo bias frequently affects human decision-making.
Conflicts of interest
A conflict of interest is when a person or organization has intersecting interests (finance, personal, etc.) which could potentially corrupt. The potential conflict is autonomous of actual improper actions, it can be found and intentionally defused before corruption, or the appearance of corruption, happens. "A conflict of interest is a set of circumstances that creates a risk that professional judgement or actions regarding a primary interest will be unduly influenced by a secondary interest."
Corruption
A conflict of interest arises when a decision-maker participates in a corrupt act that seeks to influence the outcome in favor of a specific individual, organization, or entity in a decision-making process.
Laws restricting monetary transaction is appropriate can differ between jurisdictions based upon their criminal laws. For example, some nations criminalize the receipt of political campaign contributions in the form of cash, while other nations permit cash donations provided that donors otherwise adhere to election law.
Favoritism
Favoritism, sometimes known as in-group favoritism, or in-group bias, refers to a pattern of favoring members of one's in-group over out-group members. This can be expressed in evaluation of others, in allocation of resources, and in many other ways.[Aronson, E., Wilson, T. D., & Akert, R. (2010). Social psychology. 7th ed. Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall.][ "Nepotism." Dictionary.com. Retrieved 20 June 2013.]
Lobbying
Lobbying is the attempt to influence choices made by government, frequently legislator or individuals from administrative agencies.
Regulatory issues
Self-regulation is the process whereby an organization monitors its own adherence to legal, ethical, or safety standards, rather than have an outside, independent agency such as a third party entity monitor and enforce those standards.
Regulatory capture is a form of political corruption that can occur when a regulatory agency, created to act in the public interest, instead advances the commercial or political concerns of special that dominate the industry or sector it is charged with regulating.[Timothy B. Lee, "Entangling the Web" The New York Times (August 3, 2006). Retrieved April 1, 2011] Regulatory capture is a risk to which a regulatory agency is exposed by its very nature.[Gary Adams, Sharon Hayes, Stuart Weierter and John Boyd, "Regulatory Capture: Managing the Risk" ICE Australia, International Conferences and Events (PDF) (October 24, 2007). Retrieved April 14, 2011][, World Bank.]
Shilling
Shilling is deliberately giving spectators the feeling that one is an energetic autonomous customer of a seller for whom one is working. The effectiveness of shilling relies on crowd psychology to encourage other onlookers or audience members to purchase the goods or services (or accept the ideas being marketed). Shilling is illegal in some places, but legal in others.
Statistical biases
Statistical bias is a systematic tendency in the process of data collection, which results in lopsided, misleading results. This can occur in any of a number of ways, in the way the sample is selected, or in the way data are collected.
Forecast bias
A forecast bias is when there are consistent differences between results and the forecasts of those quantities; that is: forecasts may have an overall tendency to be too high or too low.
Observer-expectancy effect
The observer-expectancy effect is when a researcher expectations cause them to subconsciously influence the people participating in an experiment. It is usually controlled using a double-blind system, and was an important reason for the development of double-blind experiments.
Reporting bias and social desirability bias
In epidemiology and empirical research, reporting bias is defined as "selective revealing or suppression of information" of undesirable behavior by subjects[ Green S, Higgins S, editors: Glossary. Cochrane Handbook for Systematic Reviews of Interventions 4.2.5. ]
Social desirability bias is a bias within Social research where survey respondents can tend to answer questions in a manner that will be viewed positively by others.[
]
Selection bias
Selection bias is the conscious or unconscious bias introduced into a study by the way individuals, groups or data are selected for analysis, if such a way means that true randomization is not achieved, thereby ensuring that the sample obtained is not representative of the population intended to be analyzed.[ Dictionary of Cancer Terms → selection bias . Retrieved on September 23, 2009.] This results in a sample that may be significantly different from the overall population.
Prejudices
Bias and prejudice are usually considered to be closely related.["bias ...; prejudice", The New Merriam–Webster Dictionary, ] Prejudice is prejudgment, or forming an opinion before becoming aware of the relevant facts of a case. The word is often used to refer to preconceived, usually unfavorable, judgments toward people or a person because of gender, political opinion, social class, Ageing, disability, religion, sexuality, race/ethnicity, language, nationality, or other personal characteristics. Prejudice can also refer to unfounded beliefs[William James wrote: "A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices." Quotable Quotes – Courtesy of The Freeman Institute ] and may include "any unreasonable attitude that is unusually resistant to rational influence".
Ageism
Ageism is the stereotyping and/or discrimination against individuals or groups on the basis of their age. It can be used in reference to prejudicial attitudes towards older people, or towards younger people.
Classism
Classism is discrimination on the basis of social class. It includes attitudes that benefit the upper class at the expense of the under class, or vice versa.
Lookism
Lookism is , prejudice, and discrimination on the basis of physical attractiveness, or more generally to people whose appearance matches cultural preferences.[Farrell, Warren (2005). Why Men Earn More: The Startling Truth About the Pay Gap -- And What Women Can Do About It. AMACOM, p. 193] Many people make automatic judgments of others based on their physical appearance that influence how they respond to those people.
Racism
Racism consists of ideologies based on a desire to dominate or a belief in the inferiority of another race.[ Racism Oxford Dictionaries]["Racism" in R. Schefer. 2008 Encyclopedia of Race, Ethnicity and Society. SAGE. p. 1113]
Sexism
Contextual biases
Biases in academia
Academic bias
Academic bias is the bias or perceived bias of academia allowing their to shape their research and the scientific community. Claims of bias are often linked to claims by conservatives of pervasive bias against political conservatives and religious Christians.
Experimenter bias
In science research, experimenter bias occurs when experimenter expectancies regarding Experiment results bias the research outcome.
Funding bias
Funding bias refers to the tendency of a scientific study to support the interests of the study's financial sponsor. This phenomenon is recognized sufficiently that researchers undertake studies to examine bias in past published studies.
Full text on net bias
Full text on net (or FUTON) bias is a tendency of scholarly method to cite with open access—that is, journals that make their full text available on the internet without charge—in their own writing as compared with Closed-access. Scholars can more easily discover and access articles that have their full text on the internet, which increases authors' likelihood of reading, quoting, and citing these articles, this may increase the impact factor of open access journals relative to journals without open access.[
]
The related bias, no abstract available bias (NAA bias) is scholars' tendency to cite journal articles that have an abstract available online more readily than articles that do not.
Publication bias
Publication bias is a type of bias with regard to what academic research is likely to be published because of a tendency among researchers and journal editors to prefer some outcomes rather than others (e.g., results showing a significant finding), which leads to a problematic bias in the published literature.[H. Rothstein, A. J. Sutton and M. Borenstein. (2005). Publication bias in meta-analysis: prevention, assessment and adjustments. Wiley. Chichester, England; Hoboken, NJ.] Experiment with significant results often do not appear to be superior to studies with a null result with respect to quality of design.
Biases in law enforcement
Driving while black
Driving while black refers to the racial profiling of African American drivers. The phrase implies that a motorist might be pulled over by a police officer, questioned, and searched, because of a Racism.
Racial profiling
Racial profiling, or ethnic profiling, is the act of suspecting or targeting a person of a certain race on the basis of racially observed characteristics or behavior, rather than on individual suspicion.
Victim blaming
Victim blaming occurs when the victim of a wrongful act is held at fault for the harm that befell them.
Biases in media
Media bias is the bias or perceived bias of and within the mass media in the selection of events, the stories that are reported, and how they are covered. The term generally implies a pervasive or widespread bias violating the standards of journalism, rather than the perspective of an individual journalist or article.[ Strategic Maneuvering and Media Bias in Political News Magazine Opinion Articles, Stefano Mario Rivolta, 7 June 2011] The level of media bias in different nations is debated. There are also watchdog groups that report on media bias.
Practical limitations to media neutrality include the inability of journalists to report all available stories and facts, the requirement that selected facts be linked into a coherent narrative, government influence including overt and covert censorship,[ "10 Most Censored Countries" , Committee to Protect Journalists, 2 May 2006] the influence of the owners of the news source, concentration of media ownership, the selection of staff, the preferences of an intended audience, and pressure from .
Bias has been a feature of the mass media since its birth with the invention of the printing press. The expense of early printing equipment restricted media production to a limited number of people. Historians have found that publishers often served the interests of powerful social groups.[Ann Heinrichs, The Printing Press (Inventions That Shaped the World), p. 53, Franklin Watts, 2005, , ]
Agenda setting
Agenda setting describes the capacity of the media to focus on particular stories, if a news item is covered frequently and prominently, the audience will regard the issue as more important. That is, its salience will increase.
Gatekeeping
Gatekeeping is the way in which information and news are filtered to the public, by each person or corporation along the way. It is the "process of culling and crafting countless bits of information into the limited number of messages that reach people every day, and it is the center of the media's role in modern public life. ... This process determines not only which information is selected, but also what the content and nature of the messages, such as news, will be."
Sensationalism
Sensationalism is when events and topics in news stories and pieces are overhyped to present skewed impressions of events, which may cause a misrepresentation of the truth of a story.[ "Issue Area: Sensationalism." Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting. Accessed June 2011.] Sensationalism may involve reporting about insignificant matters and events, or the presentation of newsworthy topics in a trivial or tabloid manner contrary to the standards of professional journalism.
Other contexts
Educational bias
Bias in education refers to real or perceived bias in the educational system. The content of school textbooks is often the issue of debate, as their target audience is young people, and the term "whitewashing" is used to refer to selective removal of critical or damaging evidence or comment.["Crisis Counseling with Children," Van Ornum and Murdock, 1990, NY: Crossroad/Continuum.]
Inductive bias
Inductive bias occurs within the field of machine learning. In machine learning one seeks to develop that are able to learn to anticipate a particular output. To accomplish this, the learning algorithm is given training cases that show the expected connection. Then the learner is tested with new examples. Without further assumptions, this problem cannot be solved exactly as unknown situations may not be predictable.
Insider trading
Insider trading is the trading of a public company's stock or other securities (such as bonds or stock options) by individuals with access to non-public information about the company. In various countries, trading based on insider information is illegal because it is seen as unfair to other investors who do not have access to the information as the investor with insider information could potentially make far larger profits that a typical investor could make.
Match fixing
In organized sports, match fixing occurs when a match is played to a completely or partially pre-determined result, violating the rules of the game and often the law.
Implicit bias
An implicit bias, or implicit stereotype, is the unconscious attribution of particular qualities to a member of a certain social group.
Implicit stereotypes are shaped by experience and based on learned associations between particular qualities and social categories, including race and/or gender. Individuals' perceptions and behaviors can be influenced by the implicit stereotypes they hold, even if they are unaware/unintentionally hold such stereotypes. Implicit bias is an aspect of implicit social cognition: the phenomenon that perceptions, attitudes, and stereotypes operate without conscious intention. For example, researchers may have implicit bias when designing survey questions and as a result, the questions do not produce accurate results or fail to encourage survey participation.[ The existence of implicit bias is supported by a variety of scientific articles in psychological literature. Implicit stereotype was first defined by psychologists Mahzarin Banaji and Anthony Greenwald in 1995.
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See also
External links
